Most don't understand the relationship between deer and invasive plants or even know a relationship exists. I came across the below article on the
Quality Deer Management Association's (QDMA) web site and thought I would share it with my readers. It hits the nail on the head.......high deer impact and invasive plant overabundance go hand in hand. As overabundant deer eliminate preferred native plant species voids are created and native plant competition, that would normally keep invasive plants out, is eliminated. As timber stands are disturbed through harvesting or natural tree mortality, few native plants are able to grow out of the reach of deer. Eventually, the understory gets overtaken by invasive plants, which deer prefer not to eat.
This is just one more reason the keep deer in balance with their habitat. I have always taught that deer management is a two-pronged approach: Population Management along with Habitat Management. You can't have deer without good habitat to support them. Too often we want to try and carry more deer without providing quality habitat. Please read the article below by Celia Vuocolo as she relates her experience in how deer and invasive plants go hand in hand. Celia and her parents own a 172 acre farm in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.
Whitetails & Invasive Plants: A
Dangerous Combination
“I can’t even tell you when we can
do the next timber harvest,” our consulting forester, Doug Tavella, said to me
in the summer of 2010. “Browsing by deer is so bad that you have almost no
hardwood regeneration. That, combined with all of the non-native invasive
plants, has stunted the development of your woodlot. You need to do something
about the deer.”
These were the last words I wanted
to hear. The 172- acre farm that my family and I own and manage in Hunterdon
County, New Jersey, has never faced a threat quite like this before. Since
1974, our farm has been under a forest management plan. Like many of the
traditional farms in New Jersey, agriculture was abandoned on our land in the
early part of the 20th Century. This allowed for the regeneration of the
woodland, creating a solid upland hardwood forest that comprises about 95
percent of our property. But forestry doesn’t just make sense for our property,
it’s also our means of survival. Maintaining a large piece of property (172
acres is large for New Jersey!) in the most densely populated state in the
country can be financially difficult. And it was starting to look like the
combination of overpopulated whitetails, an increase in non-native invasive
plants, and timber harvesting was threatening our livelihood and our woodland’s
sustainability.
I knew I had to come up with a game
plan. To understand how things got so bad, I had to go back to
the beginning and look at how we managed our woodlot and our deer. Our woodlot
is composed of four different even-aged timber stands, classed by age and
timber type. The first timber harvest occurred in the fall of 1974. It was
modest, and was done on a parcel of about 4 acres. Upland hardwoods like oaks,
ash, and yellow poplar with 16-inch diameters were harvested. However, our big
timber-harvest projects occurred consecutively in 1994, 1995, 1999, and 2000.
In 1994 and 1995, we used the shelterwood technique as a way to increase the
production of our white oaks, and harvested about 18,700 board feet.
The goal in our 1999 and 2000
timber projects was timber stand improvement (TSI), so undesirable trees were
thinned from two different stands in those seasons. All of our timber
management projects and goals were carefully planned and carried out with our
consulting forester. We followed every best management practice (BMP) and
guideline. Although timber production was a goal, forest stewardship and
sustainability always trumped it. We had managed our forest properly, with
hardwood regeneration and wildlife biodiversity in mind. So, what happened?
I like to call it the “perfect
storm.” In the mid to late1990s, right when we were doing our most intensive
timber harvests, the whitetail population in New Jersey, particularly in
Hunterdon County, exploded. By opening up the forest canopy to allow for
hardwood regeneration and plant growth, we basically set a dinner table for the
whitetails. All of the native forbs, grasses, and hardwood saplings were wiped
out. Since nothing else was able to grow, non-native and invasive plant species
moved right in and established themselves.
Most of the non-native and invasive
plants found on our property showed up on the scene the same way many alien
plants have in the United States: they were intentionally or accidentally
planted at some point in our country’s history. Our main offender at the farm,
multiflora rose, was actually distributed and encouraged by the U.S. Soil
Conservation Service in the 1930s through the 1960s as a type of natural
livestock fencing. Non-native invasives haven’t evolved with the rest of the
native ecosystem, so wildlife, like deer, won’t usually eat them. This is great
for the invasives, and since they have no natural enemies, they’re free to
multiply unchecked. Wherever there is environmental disturbance and available
sunlight, invasives will appear. Invasive plants thrive on disturbed ground,
whether it is from forestry practices or road construction. Now our woodland is
chock full of multiflora rose, Japanese stiltgrass, garlic mustard, Japanese
barberry, and a multitude of other non-natives that are completely useless to
our wildlife.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2010,
where I am having a conversation with our forester that I never wanted to have.
After researching our timber management history (I was a kid during most of
it), I came to the same conclusion he did: we have to do something about the
deer. Our timber management practices were solid, and we did everything we were
supposed to do. However, our deer management practices have always been
severely lacking. I am not a hunter, nor was my mother or father. Throughout
the 1970s and 1980s, a few relatives and some family friends hunted the land,
with no regulations other than what the state required. In the mid 1990s, my
father allowed a local hunt club on the property, and they had been hunting
ever since. It became obvious to me that traditional hunting was just not
cutting it, and that we needed a different kind of hunting program on the
property. I had known about the QDMA for a little over a year, and I came to
realize that by using the methods and ideals of QDM, I could manage our deer
herd and therefore manage our woodlot.
Finding a local group of hunters
interested in QDM wasn’t too hard. I also found it easy to strike up a healthy
and mutually beneficial relationship with our new club. Although I am a land
manager and they are hunters, we share the same goals and ideals about how to
manage our habitat and deer herd. Our first order of business is to assess the
herd with a trail-camera survey this year. Like our hunt club, our goal as
landowners is to reduce deer density to a healthy level so that hardwood
regeneration can start to occur once more and the quality of the deer herd is
re-established. I feel confident that using QDM is the first step in the
solution to re-establishing biodiversity on our farm.
However, the problem with forest
regeneration on our property is two sided, and although one aspect is on the
right track, the other one is not as simple to fix. In the years since our
timber harvests, my family and I have concentrated our efforts on controlling
the non-native and invasive plants in our woodlot. Our struggle with these
foreign invaders has yielded some victories in certain areas of the farm, but
there have been many losses. Removing a thick understory of non-native invasive
plants that spans acres is not an easy or inexpensive task.
First of all, we
can’t successfully remove the invasives without getting the initial instigator
under control: the deer population. If the deer are still too plentiful, they
will wipe out any new native plant growth that comes up after the invasives are
removed. Secondly, removing all of the invasives can be incredibly time
consuming and expensive. The amount of manpower, time, and equipment needed is
overwhelming. Some areas of the property are so thick with multiflora rose that
they create up to a half-acre of impenetrable vegetation. One area in
particular, at the site of our first timber harvest in 1974, has been
nick-named ’Nam by one of our new hunters. The only way to tackle these areas
is with heavy machinery that can clear a couple of acres in a day, and start
from scratch.
Resolving our issue of
re-establishing a healthy forest is a long way off. However, I have faith that
with some resourceful thinking and QDM, we will be able to conquer this
problem. By enlisting a QDM oriented hunt club on our property, we may actually
kill two birds with one stone. Our club recognizes the need to restore and
enhance our property’s natural habitat in conjunction with managing the deer
herd. My hope is that by combining my family’s continued efforts with our
club’s habitat management goals, that we may be able to curb the tide and get a
handle on our invasive plant problem.
I’ve learned that managing habitat
is not always black and white; there are actually a lot of shades of gray. My
family was unaware of the fluctuations of New Jersey’s deer herd in the 1990s
and its devastating effect on our future livelihood. We didn’t realize the
dangers of opening up the tree canopy and disturbing the forest floor. Once the
composition of our woodlot changed, it created a ripple effect that impacted
all wildlife.
We all know that habitat management
is one of the Four Cornerstones of QDM, but it goes beyond simply managing for
the best quality forage. Non-native and invasive plants are in every state, and
it’s important to know what they look like, and whether you have any, before
you disturb the soil and increase sunlight to the ground. By removing
invasive plants and ensuring valuable native plants become established, you’re that
much closer to guaranteeing the highest quality habitat for deer, enhancing
the biodiversity of your land, and sustaining forest management practices for years to come.
I have learned a valuable lesson
about land management, and I will carry this knowledge with me as my family and
I continue to restore our property.
About the Author:
Celia Vuocolo is the Sustainable Habitat Program Assistant with the Piedmont
Environmental Council of Virgina. She earned a degree in conservation and
wildlife management from Delaware Valley College in Pennsylvania. She is a Level
1 QDMA Deer Steward.
You can follow Celia on Twitter @CeliaVuocolo. This article was first published in QDMA's Quality Whitetails
magazine.
